Haley and Zias need higher education

Byline2:

Savannah

Barbara Kelly

Lowcountry Liberal

When Gov. Nikki Haley visited Hilton Head Island, she made a statement that she and Mick Zais would be spending the summer revamping South Carolina’s education system and the way in which it is funded. Or not funded, as she has shown recently.

Before they do that, I have a very important suggestion for them. In order to change something, it helps if one knows something about the thing to be changed. And these two are woefully uneducated about children, learning and families.

So I think their first summer session should be as follows. A course in child development, a course in learning and the brain, and a course in sociology.

It is obvious they need more information in all of these fields. Just having been a child and being a parent does not train one in these important disciplines. Their statements leave no doubt about their ignorance about all things dealing with children and education.

Zais made one of the most inane comments ever when he said that there is no need for education of young children because 4 year olds can’t learn anything anyway. How can a person of such limited information run an education system for a whole state? His 30-plus years in the Army did not prepare him for his present job. I doubt that West Point shines in the child development field. And Nikki is an accountant, and apparently not a very good one. Would you want her to do your taxes?

They both need to learn that children develop most of their brain capacity by the age of 5, and these are the most important years, not ones to ignore. Language development, upon which all the skills of reading and writing depend, is at its peak in the early years. Things like playing with nursery school blocks develops mathematical ability, and art allows for the development of creativity. There will not be a base upon which to build later skills if children during these early years are not given all the advantages they need.

Then in the field of learning and brain development they would be exposed to how children learn, and Nikki would no longer think that giving a laptop to poor children will turn them into readers. Most learning is done through interaction between an adult and a child – no computer can replace this. They would learn about motivation and how important this is to learning. They would learn that physical education and physical development helps the mind to learn, and that the arts are a very important part of academic development.

Then, in their third course, they would learn that there is an incredible amount of diversity in families, even here in South Carolina. They would be taught that differences in income and opportunity create many challenges when it comes to running an education system. Perhaps someone would enlighten them about the fact that the best predictor of good test scores is family income.

But most importantly, if they took these courses before they think about money, they would have a different mind set, one that lets them realize that children count, families count and they are not monopoly pieces. Money should not follow the child; rather money should be used to provide the very best public education possible. For every child.